Michelle Cannon's blog asks: In the field of media education, to what extent can creative media production processes, with a particular emphasis on film production, develop young peoples' social, creative, cultural and critical engagement?

PhD backroom: making is learning

Craft/media project in a south London primary school. Jointly conceived by the teacher, the Lambeth CLC and the BFI. March 2013. Photo: M Cannon

I’ve been avoiding linking this site with my PhD work because I thought trying to maintain numerous blogs would be onerous. I still think this, but do feel the need to at least acknowledge the fact that I’m doing one and so below is the PhD ‘working out’ blog. It’s a link to a page attempting to thrash out some research questions based on this conference poster.

Here are more questions that will either be jettisoned or engaged with:

How do media making practices in schools enhance or support learning?

can the claims made for cognitive and aesthetic learning in relation to traditional literacy be made for media production?

how do media making practices encourage wider sociocultural engagement and participation?

How relevant are discourses on making and participatory cultures to teaching and learning ?

in what ways can the principles of craft be recuperated in the digital era?

what is the relationship between composing and editing in digital processes and manual work?

how might traditional pedagogy respond to the informal digital practices of young people?

In the field of media education, can the academic and the vocational be reconciled?

how can we account for the widening gap between these poles?

how and where is media production positioned on this axis?

How does education reform based on economic need impact on school media production practices?

might traditional schooling learn from the skills and dispositions of hackers and open source principles?

what are the implications for critical and creative endeavour of standardised skills and training?

As may be apparent, the ‘fashioning and flow’ blog is likely to be neglected during the course of the PhD – hence for the next 2.5 years – in favour of the ‘making is learning’ blog, and even then once research data gathering and writing begins in earnest, blogging will probably be put on the back burner as I unravel the delights of the Scrivener tool.